This is up +247,000 viewers from the week prior and the first week ever that a first-run episode of Smackdown averaged more viewers than a first-run episode of WWE Raw.

We saw it coming as Smackdown was closing the gap and with a strong episode loaded with the return of John Cena and multiple title matches, it officially dethroned Raw. In fact, only the first hour of this week's Raw (which averaged 2,974,000 viewers) did more viewers than the average of this week's episode for the blue brand.

Does Raw still open with 20 minute Stephanie McMahon/Authority figure promos?

How often does raw start without someone coming to the ring and yapping for 20 minutes? This mad concept of starting a wrestling show with a wrestling match seems to be too much for the geniuses at wwe to figure out. Instead we get to see people recite badly scripted lines that sounds as natural as Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer.

I think the Wid Card theme of Smack down this week was pretty good. Instead of having a PPV for both shows every month, the show not doing a PPV could have a themed show like SD did this week. The lower tier PPVs feel like an extra episode of Raw or SD anyway so I think it would make sense.

Good for Smackdown considering they've been consistently better than RAW since the brand split. Very likely won't last beyond this week but at least the brand gets rewarded for once for being the better flowing show overall.

I still think they should just give the first hour of Raw to the cruiserweights instead of spreading their segments randomly throughout the show (and stupidly changing the ropes several times a show as a result).

Used to love Nitro kicking off with a great cruiserweight match. The crowd is always juiced up at the beginning. Then start the "normal" part of Raw at 9 PM.

Could probably put them on for just the 3rd hour as a way to boost that hour but it becomes really dependent on how well the first two hours were.

If those hours were really bad, Cruises won't do anything to fix it but if the show is at least pretty decent, could be a way to keep the show's momentum going till the end.

In WCW's case, the reason it worked very well for the first hour was because WCW rarely cared about that hour so the Cruisers were perfect to keep the crowd pumped till the real show started. In the WWE's case, they pretty much just care about the start of the hours and the main event for RAW.

I have always felt that the shows should be segmented by hours and who's featured based on pecking order.

Hour 1 consists of the cruisers and tag division, hour 2 consists of the women and mid card title, hour 3 has the upper mid card and main event scene guys.

You build towards the focal point of the show and pay it off at the end. You don't give away your main event stories and promos in the beginning. You use that time to clue the viewer in on what lies ahead and highlight the bottom of the card talent to help get them over and create interest.

This doesn't mean you can't sprinkle in backstage cut scenes to help move the plot of the show. But it does give a concrete direction in which to structure it and time for the whole roster to be utilized.

Feel like the big names shouldn't be coming out to open the show with a drawn out promo unless it's for something really important. Running your authority figures out there to start the show each week just waters down the importance of giving them mic time.